March 15th, 2019

A Global Youth Strike for Climate Action is planned for March 15 and the movement is rapidly building momentum.

High school students in Australia and Europe have begun a series of one-day strikes and demonstrations to demand that their elders treat climate change as a crisis. Young people care about the future and want a clean environment. In the UK, more recently,  organizers have said more than 10,000 young people in at least 60 towns and cities from the Scottish Highlands to Cornwall joined the strike, defying threats of detention to voice their frustration at the older generation’s inaction on the environmental impact of climate change.

The school strike movement started last August when Greta Thunberg, then 15, held a solo protest outside the Swedish parliament. Now, up to 70,000 schoolchildren each week hold protests in 270 towns and cities worldwide.

Organizers in the UK said that they would have been happy if hundreds of young people had taken part. But they said the huge turnout – in the face of threats of recriminations from some schools and criticism in sections of the media – showed the strength of feeling among young people about the climate crisis.

This past February, in Belgium, 12,000 students went on strike about being born into a polluted world, where climate change could soon render life hellish for millions. And they won’t stand for it. They demand nothing less than a total overhaul of the global economy, and they’re right.

The March 15th Global Youth Strike will include students from 40 countries, expecting 500,000 people in the streets in Europe and Australia combined. In the US, 12- year old climate activist Haven Coleman

is hoping to inspire youth here to join the global climate strike.

Read about this issue’s Gamechanger, Greta Thurnberg.

Watch youths striking in the UK

 Art by Lisa Congdon